Transporting of large longitudinal items is often very difficult. The difficulty arises in relation to the type of transport vehicle or vessel used such as a truck, railway, a ship or an aeroplane and accordingly whether the transport must take place at land, at sea or by air. However, the difficulty also arises in relation to protecting the items to be transported against any damage that may occur due to the means of transport, i.e. by truck, by railway, by ship or by aeroplane and due to the physical element the transport takes place in, i.e. either land, sea or air.
Until now, transport of large longitudinal items such as wind turbine blades and wind turbine towers primarily takes place either by ship or by truck, alternatively by railway. Often, transport of these items takes place utilising two or more of these transportation means successively. Accordingly, during transport the items will initially be loaded from the manufacturing plant onto one kind of said transportation means. Subsequently, the items may be reloaded onto other means of transportation. This puts forward a demand for the package, which the items are transported in, to be adaptable to different kinds of transport means. Therefore, the most convenient package means will be standard containers which may be transported at least by truck, by railway and by ship without having to change from one kind of package means to another. Alternatively only one kind of transportation means will be selected, which may raise the costs of transportation.
However, it may be very difficult to support the large longitudinal item in standard containers, just because they are standard containers having standard measures and having standardised ways of containing and of supporting goods in the containers. Also, standard containers have, as mentioned, standard measures, both standard heights, standard widths and standard lengths. This prescribes standard containers certain restrictions of the size and the shape of items that may be contained in the standard containers. Accordingly, if large longitudinal items such as large wind turbine blade or tall wind turbine towers are to be transported in standard containers, it is often necessary to have the blades or towers extending between two standard containers arranged in extension of each other. This is of course a cumbersome and odd way of transporting such large longitudinal items.
Alternatively, special frames may be manufactured for a specific item for a specific transportation task. This may be wooden frames or steel frames surrounding part of or the whole of the item. Such frames will have sizes specially constructed to the specific item to be transported. After the item has been transported to the final location, the frame will have to be destroyed and disposed of. This involves problems to the final receiver of the item, a problem which may be especially noticeable in outskirts such as third world countries or the like countries or at remote locations such as at sea or in deserts where means for destroying or disposing of the frames are not available. Unfortumately, third world countries and remote areas are places where wind turbines often are placed. Also, it is a waste of package just destroying the package, but this may however be necessary.